VS 2010 Premium: the Professional version with additional facilities, Microsoft Office, Expression Studio, Visio, and Project.

VS 2010 Ultimate: the Premium version with additional test case and management facilities.

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All three versions include test editions of Windows Server, Azure and SQL Server. They can be installed on XP SP2, Vista SP1, Windows 7, Server 2003 SP2, Server 2008 SP2 or better.

Visual Studio may not be cheap, but the prices and MSDN subscriptions compare well with other professional development products when you consider what you’re getting. Microsoft also provide free Express versions which are great if you want to try the technologies.

If you’re an ASP.NET developer, here’s what you can expect in VS 2010:

.NET 4.0 — the latest edition of the framework

integrated Silverlight development

MS Office programmability in C#

F# (F-Sharp), a new language which supports more than one programming paradigm. Syntactically, it looks a little Pythonesque, but I’m no Python expert so please feel free to ridicule me below!

parallel programming tools

team collaboration facilities

code analysis to help you avoid common errors

a clearer, less cluttered IDE with better multi-monitor support

Even if you’re not developing ASP.NET applications, VS now supports IntelliSense for JavaScript. That’ll be interesting — few IDEs offer decent JavaScript support, probably because of the vast array of programming patterns and prototypal inheritance in the language.

I think Microsoft is heading in the right direction with VS and ASP.NET. They appear to be following web standards and the tools are maturing well. VS 2010 will almost certainly be a success, but would you consider switching from your current language and platform of choice?

(Note that neither I or SitePoint have been approached or paid by Microsoft for this article.)

Craig is a freelance UK web consultant who built his first page for IE2.0 in 1995. Since that time he's been advocating standards, accessibility, and best-practice HTML5 techniques. He's created enterprise specifications, websites and online applications for companies and organisations including the UK Parliament, the European Parliament, the Department of Energy & Climate Change, Microsoft, and more. He's written more than 1,000 articles for SitePoint and you can find him @craigbuckler.